Staying relevant means staying competitive, and for Square, that means rolling out physical Square Cash Cards. Just days after reports surfaced that mobile payments platform Venmo is looking into creating physical debit cards so that users can instantly spend their account balances, Jack Dorsey’s payment system said, “Us, too!”
Really, Square is beating everyone else to the punch, as starting today, June 30, you can get one of these prepaid debit cards either through the Square app or its website. Much as Venmo’s rumored card is expected to work, the Square Cash prepaid card draws funds directly from your Square Cash account rather than your bank. And again, similarly, that means that you won’t have to wait to transfer money from Square Cash to Bank of America, Chase, or whatever other big bank you may use — you can just turn around and spend that money at any brick and mortar store on the spot.
Of course, as with all such announcements, you shouldn’t too excited quite yet, as Square has only just told folks that they’re able to sign up for the card — not that the cards are actually coming to you today (unless, of course, you were one of the lucky few invited to sign up early). All the same, it’s nice to know that we can apparently expect these physical cards sometime in the near future.
If you want to go ahead and sign up now, you may be tickled to find out that you can actually customize these cards a bit, at least by creating your very own laser-etched signature. You don’t have to just stop at your name — some folks have tweeted their own creative takes on personalization, with various languages (including Hindi) being utilized, as well as emoji. And the design of the card itself is about as minimal as it gets — there’s no card number (because it’s not actually a debit or credit card). It just bears the Visa Debit logo and the chip.
So if you’re looking to add another piece of plastic to your pocket, you may want to forego the credit card and instead check out the Square Cash card.
